Quantum Emerging Technologies

A new journal to watch: ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems?

JETC covers research and development in emerging technologies in computing systems. Major economic and technical challenges are expected to impede the continued scaling of semiconductor devices. This has resulted in the search for alternate mechanical, biological/biochemical, nanoscale electronic, and quantum computing and sensor technologies. As the underlying nanotechnologies continue to evolve in the labs of chemists, physicists, and biologists, it has become imperative for computer scientists and engineers to translate the potential of the basic building blocks (analogous to the transistor) emerging from these labs into information systems.

So far no quantum computing papers, but I think this will be changing very soon.

5 Replies to “Quantum Emerging Technologies”

  1. Yup, it will be changing very soon: Mark Oskin and I have a paper, “Architectural Implications of Quantum Computing Technologies”, which should be hitting the streets Any Day Now. This is nominally the Jan. 2006 issue, so I’ve actually had email from folks saying, “Hey, I can’t find it,” but hang tight, it’ll be out soon.
    The DiVincenzo criteria tell us whether or not it’s possible to build a quantum computer on a specific technology. They tell us nothing about how hard it will be to build, program, and operate, nor how fast (and consequently how useful) it will be. That paper is our humble attempt at laying out a complementary set of criteria based on pragmatic engineering constraints.
    Yes, JETC looks like exactly the kind of venue we need for papers on quantum computers, magnetic quantum cellular automata, DNA computing, nanomechanical computing, maybe microfluidics, architectural impact of plasmonics, reversible classical computers — everything that is still too nascent to build large-scale, complete systems. I’m excited about the journal.
    So, if you have a paper that you think is about the architecture or implementation of a quantum computer, I encourage you to submit it! JETC aims to have much shorter publication turnaround than, say, Transactions on Computers or the like.

  2. Well the problem is that there are plenty of good CS papers which are not on the arxiv!
    I think the main reason for this has to do with the importance of conference proceedings for CS people. Since submitting to important conference proceedings is a sign of prestige, this means that you don’t want others to know that you have a paper rejected from a proceedings (because that would ruin your chances of getting it accepted at a later date in another prestigious proceedings.) So you don’t want to put the paper on the archive because it shows that you have a paper and, if it doesn’t get published in one of the proceedings soon, well then you look “bad.”
    Of course this all seems really really crazy for people coming from the physics side of the equation where there isn’t the conference proceedings prestige. Personally I’d rather just put everything on the arxiv and don’t give a damn about where it gets published. That would make my soul happy. Of course what makes my soul happy might not make the academe happy 😉

  3. Interesting. This reminded me of a previous thread in your blog where Theoretical Computer Scientists were crying bitterly over their public image crisis. Well, what do they expect if they hide their work behind walls of priviledge. They are victims of their own pettiness. Instead of publishing more in Nature magazine, did any of those peacocks suggest publishing more in ArXiv (or their own open library)?

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